


Oath of Allegiance

by PinkLady80



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22292029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLady80/pseuds/PinkLady80
Summary: A day in the life of Frederik Andersen, Deputy Minister of Magical Games and Sports to Minister for Magic, Hermione Jane Granger.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Oath of Allegiance

**Author's Note:**

> A big Thank You to Bidawee for your constructive criticism and excitement, you are a gem!

The floo must be temperamental this morning because it forcefully ejects Freddie into the atrium of the Ministry. He keeps his balance and has just finished shaking out his robes when it spits out his Quidditch kit-bag, almost taking him out at the knees.

He hopes it isn’t going to be one of those days.

Even at 7am, the Ministry is filled with birds. There are the trans-Atlantic Albatrosses from the Americas and Eagle-owls from across the channel. The flapping of wings and clacking of beaks creates a wall of sound.

He still doesn’t understand how they get in or out. Sometimes, you have to just let the magic keep it’s secrets.

He dodges the memos zooming towards him, the one covered in jammy fingerprints gets extra space, and about two dozen crowd into the elevator with him. Freddie’s glad his stop is Level 7, he’s not ready to deal with the unpredictability of Ministry elevators this early in the morning.

Under Cornelius Fudge and Ludo Bagman, the Ministry of Magical Games and Sports was a career dead-end, it was where people who weren’t good enough for other departments were stashed until retirement, but was modernized under Minister Shacklebolt.

Now the walls are papered with enchanted parchment showing the real-time scores for any professional quidditch match. Also posted are the standings for the Ministry’s interdepartmental league; Magical Games and Sports is third behind the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Department of Mysteries.

Magical Games and Sports employs a staff of 25. They had finally been budgeted an additional five people last year after the load on Ludicrous Patents had gotten too great and several boxes had simultaneously exploded when their contents had destabilized. Thankfully, only Tim and Inez had needed bones regrown; it could have been worse. 

None of the memos get off with him, but the first round of post as already been delivered because the box on Jaya’s desk seems to have something slimy leaking from it. The Daily Prophet sits by the kettle, someone will want to do the puzzle. 

It’s still a dribbly rag and today’s headline asks if the current political climate wouldn’t be better served by someone with more experience. Freddie is sure the political climate would be better if the editors stopped printing nonsense designed to scare people and remembered what Minister for Magic Hermione Granger did as a student and her reputation within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

The morning after taking office, Granger had called an All-Ministry meeting in the Atrium. Government, she said, should be an institution of safety and equality. It would be unethical for any person or creature in Magical Britain to be hungry, homeless, powerless, or without an education.

She had looked up at them as she spoke, the suspended seating mirroring a Roman coliseum. Underneath the unadorned black robes and carefully braided bun, Freddie was sure he could see the teenager he learned about in history class.

“ _If you want to challenge me,”_ her face said as her voice spoke of a government’s responsibilities to those they serve, ensuring humans and creatures are free from fear and basic wants, and how citizens affect change. _“Because I’m too young, because other people have served longer, because we are living in delicate times,_ _come at me with all your power and strength. But make no mistakes, because my will is great.”_

And maybe the seating arrangement hadn’t been chosen for the convenience of her audience. Maybe the new Minister for Magic chose the layout because she knew people would be judging her, some hoping for her to fail, but because politics is a blood sport and this woman will defeat all challengers.

This morning is mostly uneventful, Freddie visits several locations that will properly make the short-list to host the Gobstones Championship, gets updated on the campaign to have Britain selected to host the Quidditch World Cup, and writes a fourth disciplinary recommendation for the Falmouth Falcons, who have decided to fully embrace their club motto this season. 

The department takes an early lunch when Jaya’s slimy box starts to dissolve her desk, forcing an evacuation. Freddie spends two hours in the Ministry canteen filling out accident paperwork in triplicate and trying to prepare for a meeting when all the paperwork is still in his desk.

Bloom from Magical Law Enforcement comes by for an interview and to collect his reports, saying everything is clear and Maintenance has found another desk. Jaya can have the contents of her old desk back when they confirm it wasn’t contaminated by the slime.

The afternoon brings all Ministry heads and their deputies together in Granger’s office. With Minister Benedict out on family leave, Freddie is the only one representing Games and Sports. Under the prior government, meetings where conducted at a rectangular table with everyone sitting in rank order. Now the table is round, Granger not caring two knuts about seniority, ensuring everyone can see each other. Freddie takes a seat between Rees from The Department of Magical Transportation and Dubashi from The Department of International Cooperation. Her eyes are tight and Freddie knows the foreign desks are overworked.

If Granger is the big stick, her own deputy Whyte, who came with her from DMLE, is the soft voice. He’s a very tall man with a quick mind and a deep laugh. The two work well together because while Granger gets in the weeds to do the fact-finding and the legal maneuvering, Whyte always knows the right people to talk to.

Whyte opens the meeting, inviting everyone to take a cup of tea. The teapot must be charmed to the drinker’s preferences, because Rees is happily drinking something that looks and smells like bog water while Dubashi has a strong black tea. Freddie isn’t a big tea drinker but when the pot pours him blueberry tea, he’s transported back to his childhood and memories of eating breakfast with his family.

The elephant in the room is Brexit. Everyone except Granger wants to avoid that conversation for as long as possible, instead they discuss the expanded budget for Magical Cooperation, the Quidditch World Cup, and the fires in Australia. 

Granger thinks that sending support in the form of additional man-power is the right thing to do; The Auror Office has more field medics than is currently needed and Rees has two willing volunteers from both the Floo Network Authority and the Portkey Office. The Australian Ministry had closed all fireplaces in evacuated areas, increasing the strain on ones just outside the fire zones and causing a spike in demand for Portkeys. Fortunately the floo is standardized across the Commonwealth, so no time will be lost retraining. 

Everything is ready to go whenever Prime Minister Morrison gives permission. 

Freddie had reached out to his counterpart, a woman whose sunburnt face is normally split by a toothy smile, to ask he could be of assistance. Eleanor’s only comment had been that a department focused on sport seems useless in times like these but had promised to floo if any need arose.

He can emphasize with her frustration.

Granger sends the pot around again, Freddie is served an apple tea he’s never tried before but finds enjoyable, before jumping in with both feet.

This government has no intentions of breaking away from Wizarding Europe. The magical community is too small for that to be anything less than a terrible mistake, but the years-long Muggle Brexit debacle caused tension with other Wizarding governments. 

Granger and Whyte had spent several weeks visiting other countries, recommitting this government to alliances and treaties signed and maintained by prior governments. Their efforts satisfied Wizarding Europe but the Prophet had taken offense, accusing Granger of wasting taxpayer money by swanning around the fashionable parts of Europe while simultaneously causing great embarrassment by dressing like a frump and caving to unreasonable demands.

Unfortunately, the Prophet is not alone in not appreciating Granger’s efforts to maintain stability. Those who might harbor unpopular ideas about blood purity and the children of suspected and known supporters of Voldemort have started speaking out in support of the Muggle government. Their reasoning is Britain’s Magical economy is less dependent on Wizarding Europe than British muggles are on Europe. And besides, there isn’t anything wrong with fixing your problems first before helping others.

It’s all a fabrication of course. Smooth travel via international floo and portkey are totally dependent on the the free movement of people between European states. Would the Floo Network have to be divided up between foreign and domestic? Freddie gets a headache just thinking of the queues and the hassle of checking paperwork before using an international floo. How would that even work? Or the Portkey Office? 

The Potions community also imports many of their supplies from the continent. Witches and Wizards have been injuring themselves for centuries in ways that would be fatal if not for spells and potions. What would these people have St Mungo’s do while waiting for supplies to clear customs? Build a new ward to keep patients charmed in stasis? That sounds worse than the Janus Thickey ward.

As if to test the waters, the Prophet had printed a opinion by Blaise Zambini, a snobby recluse whose mother married many rich men who died mysteriously during the 1980s and 1990s, talking about the long history of magic in Britain. 

It had been a clever piece. The writing soft and whimsical, reminiscing for a time when children knew common songs, stories, and heroes. When looking at one’s family trapistrey gave people a foundation and an understanding of magical traditions.

The Prophet had been overwhelmed with responses, and while most readers said that Zambini’s ideas were outdated, fanciful, or harmful, enough had written in support as to be concerning.

  
—

  
Freddie remembers his parents’ anxiety and vigilance during the during the Deatheater rise and return of Voldemort. He’s the oldest child of two Danish career foreign service officers and has lived in England for nearly his entire life.

When Freddie was a child, families like his were housed in a comfortable bloc of flats charmed to look like council housing. Every morning he would would walk to school with the other children and after school they would play football and quidditch in the street, rain or shine.

But unrest and rumors of Voldemort’s return caused all of that to change. First, his parents and the nanny wouldn’t let Freddie walk to or from school or play outside unsupervised. As the Deatheaters grew bolder, the wards protecting their area where regularly attacked and it wasn’t uncommon for Freddie to hear his parents out in the hallway talking with their neighbors late at night.

One by one, Freddie’s friends left. Sometimes, he knew they would be leaving but other times they left quickly and he only found out when they didn’t show up for the walk to school.

In 1997, Denmark recalled their all their foreign service officers living in England after the wards fell around the diplomatic housing bloc and Freddie’s front door was blasted in by an unknown, robed figure. His father had shoved Freddie and his siblings into the floo, sending them to their grandparents in Herning. He joined them two days later. 

Freddie’s mother had volunteered to stay behind as part of a less-than skeletal staff and for almost a year the only time he saw her was during her irregular floo-calls. 

Freddie still doesn’t know everything that happened during that time, only that she had kept a group of foreign service officers and Ministry employees safe at great personal risk to herself when the Ministry was attacked in 1998.

Minister Shacklebolt had hosted a fancy dinner and reception honoring Freddie’s mother and others like her after the new normal returned. He doesn’t remember much about it, lots of people had talked and his parents let him eat two desserts, but looking back that night he began to understand how resilient people are.

Freddie’s family returned to the same flat after the war and so did many of his friends. Life moved along. 

Freddie got his Hogwarts letter and was sorted into Ravenclaw. He took a lot of classes he enjoyed, a few he didn’t, and used the greenhouses as his personal study space. The plants made him feel at ease and Professor Longbottom never minded. 

He unexpectedly joined the Quidditch team his second year as a Keeper and spent two years growing into the role before backstopping Ravenclaw to four consecutive cups. 

He almost broke a house record for the number of NEWTs he received and was headhunted by the Ministry for Magic. They thought his charmwork and defensive application of magic would fit in with the Ludicrous Patents division.

His parents had been overjoyed when the Ministry owl had delivered his offer, Mum had squeezed him so hard Freddie thought he would pop and Dad’s eyes looked a little misty.

On Freddie’s first day, the Intake witch from HR asked him if he had a will and what he wanted done with his body should he die on the job. Freddie had just looked at her; he was joining Magical Games and Sports, not the Aurors. She had had made a tisking sound before telling him he needed to designate someone who could be contacted in an emergency and making him sign a small stack of papers (He finally understood the nature of her question two months later after a very unstable box sent him to St Mungo’s for a week.).

In his 10 years with the Ministry, Freddie doesn’t know if he’s made the world a better place but he hopes he’s made some small contribution to safety and equality.

  
—

  
There isn’t much anyone can do or say about Brexit that hasn’t been said before, and until Prime Minister Johnson runs the country Freddie loves over a cliff and short-term fallout is known, this government is forced into a holding pattern.

The atmosphere in the room only gets more glum when Lau, Granger’s assistant, knocks on the door to say the Johnson government is requesting a meeting on Monday. She only nods and downs the rest of her tea like it will give her strength.

It’s an open secret that Granger and Johnson don’t like each other, both personally and politically, and Freddie can’t think of two more dis-similar people. Where Granger is methodical, Johnson seems to move though the world flying by the seat of his pants. Both are apt at seeing where the political winds are blowing, but while one of them latches on to the hot issue of the day hoping it will carry them far, the other turns towards it.

Whyte closes out the meeting because it’s 5:00pm on a Thursday afternoon, time for the weekly interdepartmental quidditch match. This week, Freddie’s department is playing the suddenly surging Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. He thinks they can still win because Magical Accidents fills their keeper position through a rotation of half-willing volunteers.

The pitch is on the Atrium level and the weather is chosen by Maintenance. Today, it’s a tropical sea-side scene, hot and humid with roaring waves. Freddie knows his jumper is going to be disgusting; though sweat can’t make it worse because this year’s departmental jumper is brown with gold at the cuffs and a Quidditch pitch on the chest. 

It’s worse than the ugly Yule jumpers that always seem to multiply at the annual Ministry Yule party. Freddie misses last year’s jumper, solid blue and monogrammed with the department seal.

The match is only an hour but when the time charm calls it, Freddie’s team is up 250-100. He shakes hands with Deputy Minister Fakhoury, everyone lining up behind them.

When Freddie steps into the floo, it’s almost 7pm. The Atrium is still filled with birds and memos because the gears of government never stop turning. Tomorrow, he’ll have to deal with an angry quidditch manager and the uncertainty of Brexit will still hang low, but today is done.

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.


End file.
